


If Only

by sciencefictioness



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Gore, Christmas fic, M/M, Pining, Serious Injuries, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:02:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21775678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sciencefictioness/pseuds/sciencefictioness
Summary: Gabriel did his best to make it special for Jesse when he could, even if it was only in the smallest of ways; miniature candy canes shoved in his gear.  A ridiculous light-up Rudolph nose hanging from a string of cheap elastic from the rearview of whatever car they’d requisitioned for a mission. A present on Christmas eve, maybe— something small.  Something he could play off as casual.Something that wouldn’t show his hand, like Jesse didn’t see through all that.  Like he didn’t know Gabriel better than almost anyone.Even Gabriel himself on occasion.Towards the end, at least.Sometimes the world was on fire and sometimes it wasn’t but when December crept up on Gabriel uninvited, Jesse was right beside him, making everything just a little easier.Until he wasn’t anymore.Until Gabriel’s world never stopped burning.Until there was nothing but ashes, and an empty space beside him where Jesse used to be.
Relationships: Jesse McCree/Reaper | Gabriel Reyes
Comments: 9
Kudos: 120





	If Only

**Author's Note:**

> I thought this was soft but have been informed it hurts a lot so, please enjoy.

Sometimes, it was a mission. 

Usually it was a mission, bullets flying and the merciless brightness and noise of Jesse’s flashbangs. They holed up in some safehouse waiting for intel, taking turns sleeping; it was Jesse’s warmth against his side in a too-small car or a shitty hotel room. Jesse’s hair mussed with sleep when he shook him awake, an extra cup of too-sweet coffee in his hand,  _ come on, get up, it’s time to roll out. _

They’d had over a decade to ease slowly into one another’s space, so deep it would be impossible to extricate themselves. Gabriel wouldn’t have known what to do without him there, too close and too loud. Too much. 

Just enough, always.

Gabriel  _ didn’t _ know what to do, later on. After— when Jesse pulled and tore himself free.

When Jesse took pieces of Gabriel with him, and never gave them back.

Before, though.

Before it was Jesse’s shoulders pressed against his in the dark and Jesse’s hands on his arms and Jesse’s gun in the air. Jesse’s voice in Gabriel’s ear as they crept through alleys or crawled through forests; mountains and swamps and miles of empty farmland. It wasn’t always some desolate landscape or warehouse district they snuck through with their weapons drawn and their eyes searching for enemies.

There were also bustling cities with rainbow lights twinkling on shop windows. Oversized Christmas trees looming in downtown squares, hung with glittering ornaments, empty boxes underneath wrapped in shining paper. Snow fell picturesque around them as people pushed past with their arms full of shopping bags, comms chattering in their ears, only half drowning out the holiday music pouring from speakers outside of every other store. 

Tech hand-offs, and Talon agents, and too many fucking civilians for Gabriel to do his job the way he liked. Still, they managed, blood on fresh snowfall or the wail of police sirens or just Jesse’s wide, infectious grin as they made another clean getaway.

Sometimes it was Overwatch’s annual holiday party at whatever base of operations they’d ended up at that year. They were varying levels of classy, depending on who’d organized them; tall, thick fir trees with white lights and silver ornaments and broad red ribbons, or plastic trees lit up in flashing neon. Some of the most dangerous military agents on earth slurred their way through Christmas carols, drunk on cheap eggnog and shoving sugar cookies in their mouths. 

Wherever Gabriel was, Jesse was there with him— in his Blackwatch gear smelling like gunpowder, eyes glinting like only Jesse’s could as he focused, aimed, fired. Jesse with his back against the bricks of some decrepit building, reading Gabriel’s wordless instructions like they were written across his face.

Jesse, catching his eye from across a room full of tipsy soldiers, holding his gaze with one eyebrow cocked up as he pressed a candy cane deep, deep, deeper between his lips. Jesse, shoving Gabriel into a wall just out of sight, the mistletoe hanging in a nearby doorway the flimsiest of excuses.

There was Jesse wearing nothing but a pair of felt reindeer antlers strobing with multicolored lights, straddling Gabriel in his bed. Jesse in a santa hat kneeling between his feet, looking up through thick lashes as he took Gabriel into his mouth. 

Jesse loved Christmas in the way people only did if they’d never really had it when it meant the most. Orphaned in the desert, running guns for Deadlock, grinding his way through Blackwatch training one brutal day at a time. Then there was gunfire and an endless rotation of missions and  _ yes, sir. Copy that, sir. _

_ On your six, Reyes, watch out! _

The holidays had never been a huge deal for Gabriel after he grew out of the novelty as a child, but they’d always been something just out of reach for Jesse; something other people did. 

People with more money, more family, more hours in their day. It wasn’t hard to pick up on the way Jesse went soft and pleased when they caught a private moment at the right time. They’d slip through the dark common room of some generic base, walls glowing in a dozen different colors, stockings tacked to the walls with the names of the agents stationed there written on them in shimmering cursive. Jesse would smile, and stay quiet, but Gabriel saw.

Once he realized, Gabriel did his best to make it special for Jesse when he could, even if it was only in the smallest of ways; miniature candy canes shoved in his gear. A ridiculous light-up Rudolph nose hanging from a string of cheap elastic from the rearview of whatever car they’d requisitioned for a mission. A present on Christmas eve, maybe— something small. Something he could play off as casual.

Something that wouldn’t show his hand, like Jesse didn’t see through all that. Like he didn’t know Gabriel better than almost anyone. 

Even Gabriel himself on occasion.

Towards the end, at least. 

Sometimes the world was on fire and sometimes it wasn’t but when December crept up on Gabriel uninvited, Jesse was right beside him, making everything just a little easier.

Until he wasn’t anymore.

Until Gabriel’s world never stopped burning. 

Until there was nothing but ashes, and an empty space beside him where Jesse used to be.

An empty space inside him.

Gabriel kept moving through the hurt.

-

Jesse was in North Dakota. Jesse was in Utah. Jesse was in Texas, again, and again. 

Jesse was running, like he was always running.

If he ever slowed down, he was dead.

The snows came in earnest, and Jesse headed south until he outran them, too, getting lost in barren trees and dry leaves and winter that hit without fanfare; lost in deserts he could never really be lost in, no matter how hard he tried. 

The first real snap of cold came so late in the southwest that everything snuck up on him, and all at once he was surrounded by tinsel and nativities and bright red bows, little wire reindeer eternally grazing on rocky lawns. It seemed sudden— one day there were gourds and decorative turkeys as far as the eye could see, all the leftover vestiges of Thanksgiving, then the next it was inescapable. Christmas, everywhere.

Something in Jesse twisted, and tugged, like it wanted to pull him to his knees. There was a hollow place in him that yawned wider for a moment, swallowing everything inside until Jesse was nothing but emptiness, and he wasn’t trudging through southwest suburbia, anymore. 

He was across the ocean in the middle of a Swiss forest. Thousands of miles away looking at the shining Toronto skyline through frosted glass. Getting lost in sewers in Eastern Europe.

Underneath the ground in Rome.

Underneath  _ Gabriel  _ in Rome, bells hanging from a ribbon around his neck chiming softly as Gabriel pinned him down. Mouth on his jaw and fingers around his wrists and he kneed his thighs apart and— 

Jesse fucking hated Christmas.

He swore under his breath, staggering down a side street and shaking the memories away. He had bigger things to worry about, like the knife in his arm and the Talon agent lurking somewhere on the rooftops, close enough to a get a bead on him. 

Close enough to get a bullet in him, almost. He’d heard one ping against the wall next to his head. Heard another zing by as he turned and ran.

Jesse weaved serpentine through alleys and dipped into empty office buildings; ancient train stations, disused bus depots. Nobody knew this cluster of ramshackle desert towns like Jesse, especially not some half-assed Talon sniper. He had a half-dozen old safehouses scattered through the area— places no one would give enough of a shit about to clean out. He’d pick his way from one to the next until they lost his scent, then make his way east in earnest. Lingering after he’d been targeted by mercenaries wouldn’t be his best move.

He pulled out his lockpicks in a desolate backyard, concrete wall crumbling around its edges, broken wind chimes ringing discordant in the breeze. The house was collapsing on itself, but the basement was intact last time Jesse had stumbled down into it, power leached off some unwary neighbors to keep the lights on. The lock was rusted with disuse, but after a while it gave, clicking open to let Jesse inside. He made it far enough down the stairs that he could pull the door shut and lock it again from the inside, then trudged the rest of the way and switched on the lights.

They flickered for a few seconds before coming on, and Jesse stood frozen for a moment. 

The basement was mostly just as he’d left it— a big open area with racks of storage shelves along one wall, a tiny bathroom tucked in the corner, a couch that folded out into a bed that had seen better days. A thick layer of dust. A general sense of dilapidation. 

There were medical kits and MREs and cases of water bottles. Canned food, extra clothes, spare weapons and ammunition. Most of it was from his time in Blackwatch, but he’d made a few stops here since, refreshed some of his gear. Blackwatch’s bolt-holes were usually off the record— places set up by one or two agents before they ran a mission in a particular area, used as necessary, then cleaned out and disregarded. Gabriel and Jesse didn’t always pick up after themselves— they never knew when they might need to hide away. There was no one around anymore who’d know about this one.

No one but him, and Gabriel Reyes. The thought sat heavily on his shoulders as he took stock of all the little differences that were impossible to miss. 

There were a handful of red and white candy canes on the coffee table next to the couch, and a string of rainbow lights tacked haphazardly on the wall above it. A half-dozen ornaments hung from random nails in the plaster. Jesse recognized the decorations as things that had been in the basement before they’d repurposed it for their own use— things left behind when the owners cut their losses and ran.

Jesse very deliberately didn’t think of how that reminded him of Gabriel, too. Of himself.

Cutting, and running, and leaving him behind.

The first time he’d seen Gabriel in person since Blackwatch— the first time he’d seen  _ Reaper—  _ he’d shown up out of nowhere in the middle of a firefight, taken a handful of bullets for Jesse, and shoved him back down into cover.

_ What you doing, you idiot? _

_ Get out of here! _

Then he’d wraithed away in a cloud of smoke and disappeared into the melee, drawing the fire of a crowd of angry gangsters and giving Jesse a chance to escape. It wasn’t an isolated incident. Every few months or so Reaper came crashing through Jesse’s life to jump in the way of a sniper’s rifle or take a chest full of buckshot. To shove a needle of biotics into his throat when he thought he was bleeding out.

To pull him to the ground behind a stack of crates in a warehouse, hands shaking as he laid his palms on Jesse’s face,  _ why are you here, this place is gonna blow in five minutes! Jesus Christ, Jesse. _

Then— 

_ Come with me,  _ and Jesse dissolved with him in a fog of black and he didn’t know where Gabriel ended and he began. They moved together, irrevocably entangled, Gabriel leading them somewhere safe.

It wasn’t that much different than it had always been.

Except that afterwards Gabriel left him behind, instead; Jesse probably deserved that.

Gabriel certainly had.

There was a plastic container on the coffee table with a dozen of Jesse’s favorite cookies inside, shaped like snowflakes and dusted in sugar. Suddenly the knife in his arm was afterthought compared to the way his chest ached. Jesse grabbed a medkit off the shelves and sat down on the couch with a sigh, glancing around with new eyes. There were boot prints in the dust on the floor. The shotgun ammo had been partially depleted. Jesse wondered how long it had been since Gabriel left.

If he was close. If he’d laid eyes on Jesse.

Made sure he got home safe. 

Jesse put his face in his hands and let out a rough breath.

Then he yanked the knife out of his arm, and let the sting carry him through.

-

The next safehouse he ducked into was a unit at a rundown storage facility, secreted away behind a bright orange metal door that protested when he rolled it up on rusting hinges. Jesse winced at the noise, pulling it shut behind him before feeling around in the dark for the generator he’d left behind courtesy of Blackwatch— whisper quiet, wired to a fancy solar charger on the roof somewhere. 

No knives in him, thankfully, but he’d landed wrong on his left side trying to duck the same group of Talon agents that had been dogging him for the past week. His ankle was sprained at the very least, and had the arm he caught himself on not been made of metal, his wrist would have been broken, too.

He found the generator by slamming his shin into it, swearing as he put too much weight on his injured leg and almost collapsed. Jesse pawed at the distantly familiar shape, hunched over with his teeth bared as he sucked air through them, eventually finding the switch and turning it on with a click. It was cold enough that he could see his breath. 

Jesse needed heat, biotics, food, and sleep, in that precise order.

Then the power hummed to life, and he didn’t need anything but a moment to breathe.

The string of lights was white this time, obviously made to be put outdoors, little faux icicles dangling from the wire every few inches. They were strung up on various objects in the room; hanging off of shelves, looped over a broken clock, snagged on the corner of an upturned couch that had been shoved against a wall. Another candy cane sat on the twin bed that dominated the space, a smear of red on the plastic wrapping. No cookies, but there was some blood on the floor, and a missing stash of biotic injectables. 

Gabriel, taking things. 

Gabriel, leaving them behind.

Jesse leaned his forearm against one of the shelves and tucked his face into his elbow, inhaling until it hurt his lungs. Holding it until they felt like they might explode. Letting it out slow.

There were two biotic fields left, bloody fingerprints on one of them as though Gabriel had picked it up, then put it back down again. Jesse sat on the bed and dropped the canister between his feet, sighing as he was bathed in golden light. The muscles and tendons in his ankle twinged, then relaxed, everything healing and setting into place. The shallow cut on his palm closed up; the bruise on his back, the fracture in his ribs. 

His chest still ached. It was nothing biotics would fix. 

Gabriel was a tangible thing in the room with Jesse— Gabriel pressed behind him on the too-small bed, Gabriel’s hands in his clothes, Gabriel’s voice in his ear. 

Gabriel, close enough to leave messages for Jesse in the vestiges of what they’d been together.

Jesse had never been more alone.

The field had him drowsy, and Gabriel had him hollow, and Jesse laid down sideways on the bed with his feet still on the floor, throwing an arm over his face and closing his eyes. He reached out blindly with his other, feeling over the musty blankets until his fingers closed around the candy cane. The wrapper crinkled under his touch. Jesse could feel Gabriel’s blood on the plastic.

It was wet to the touch.

Jesse shoved it in his pocket and let the drugging, nostalgic glow of the biotic field drag him into sleep.

-

Abandoned places in the suburbs. Forgotten corners hidden in the city. Jesse jumped from safehouse to safehouse, dodging Talon and keeping out of sight. 

Gabriel was always one step ahead of him, leaving the ghost of what they’d always shared together in his wake. Fragments of something he’d yearned for, then held close, and finally learned to despise.

Gabriel, giving him things.

Gabriel, taking them away again.

Lights, always. Jesse’s favorite part. There was also chocolate full ground up peppermint wrapped in red and white foil, or little bells hanging from ribbon, all of the decorations stolen from fuck know’s where. Talon was closer and closer on his heels.

Finding all these places with Gabriel’s presence lingering there was like finding a campfire that had burned down to embers. Still glowing, still smoking.

Not enough to keep him warm. 

-

Jesse found Gabriel.

Talon found Jesse.

Talon’s bullets found Jesse, burying themselves in his lungs and his guts and Gabriel was there wrapping him up in black smoke and making him disappear. It swam into his blood and crawled inside his bones and it burned him like fire and froze him like ice and there was none of Jesse left that wasn’t Gabriel, too.

Gabriel shifted them both through the night, Jesse dizzy and spinning and there was nothing, he was nothing— no eyes to see, no ears to hear. 

No skin to feel and no heart to beat and Jesse was empty but he wasn’t alone. He could have stayed like that.

He didn’t think he’d mind.

Gabriel reformed them both in the safehouse Jesse had been headed towards in the first place. He came back to himself in some vacant suburban garage, arms curled around his middle and head spinning. Jesse retched onto the concrete floor— it was vivid red, and Jesse grimaced and listed away from it, leaning into Gabriel where he crouched behind him.

There were still tendrils of black twisting around them both; not all of it had pulled out of Jesse . He could feel it inside, wisps of white-hot agony piecing him back together. Gabriel was talking, but it sounded far away, and Jesse couldn’t focus on the words. 

Something sharp pricked his throat. Jesse slapped at it instinctively, but already felt the warmth of biotics flooding into him by the time he made contact with Gabriel as he pulled his hand away. There was the telltale  _ click-hiss  _ of a biotic field being activated, the whole room painted in honey gold light. Then Gabriel had a bottle pressed to his lips, forcing him to drink— electrolytes laced with biotics. Salty with a hint of something medicinal that made his nose wrinkle. He swallowed as fast as he could, then choked, spewing some of the liquid out and coughing for a while. 

Gabriel manhandled him forward to yank his punctured chest plate off, then tore his shirt wide to prod at his wounds. They were still bleeding, albeit sluggishly. Jesse swore as Gabriel ripped open some sort of ointment with his teeth and squeezed it out over the bullet holes, rubbing it in with a lack of bedside manner that would have put O’Deorain to shame. Fields and needles and drinks and dermals. Gabriel’s nanites eating him alive. Jesse tried and failed to shove Gabriel’s hands away.

“Jesus, Gabriel, stop it! ‘M fine.”

It was slurred and thick in his mouth. Gabriel held him tighter, chin hooked over his shoulder and chest against his back.

“You’re dying, baby,” he said, and Jesse blinked down at himself, hands covered in blood. Shaking.

He was shaking all over.

“Oh.”

More of Gabriel’s smoke broke away from him, pouring into Jesse’s wounds. It hurt more than the bullets. More than any bullets he’d ever taken. His muscles went tense, and his jaw locked up.

Jesse started seizing. It went on for ages, until Jesse wasn’t sure if it would ever stop again.

It was over in an instant. His head was in Gabriel’s lap, the pain in his chest and stomach flaring and fading as Gabriel tended to the injuries as best he could. He wasn’t a medic, but he’d patched up more soldiers than Jesse could count, and that was without factoring in the Crisis. The biotics were stacking up on him, though, eyelids heavy and body going loose.

“I got you, okay? I got you.”

It had been a long time since Gabriel had him.

Jesse went under like the dead.

-

He woke up in bed, warmer than he ever remembered being, soft blankets pulled up around his waist. Every breath he took was agonizing, and when he moved fire shot through his bones and into his teeth, but Jesse was alive. Miraculously.

Impossibly.

His eyes opened with some effort, and Jesse blinked through the blurriness until the room cleared around him. 

There was a tree in the corner, lit and full of ornaments and thick with tinsel, a star shimmering iridescent on top. A garland twisting with red ribbon stretched around the room. There were a pair of stockings tacked to the wall of the garage.

Gabriel sat in a chair beside the bed, bone-white mask sitting on the bedside table, hood falling down to show his face. He was paler than he should’ve been, sallow and sickly. That was Jesse’s fault, probably.

It couldn’t be good for Gabriel to have parts of himself coursing through Jesse instead, stitching his veins together, mending holes in his lungs. There was a fresh biotic field on the table next to Gabriel’s mask, humming with light. Jesse’s upper body was wrapped in bandages, snug enough that it was uncomfortable. He wasn’t going to complain.

For all he knew, they were holding him together.

When he glanced over at Gabriel again his eyes were open, something faintly red glowing in his irises.

There were a hundred things he wanted to say— thank you. I’m sorry.

I’m not.

I missed you, Gabriel.

What came out was—

“I’m still mad at you.”

All this time Gabriel had been running around trying to settle old grudges, to bury old traitors. To pull Talon apart from the inside.

Trying to do it alone for no good reason, except he was too fucking stubborn to do anything else. Too narcissistic to think anyone could help him. Too self-important to believe Jesse might understand; Gabriel had always been a fucking disaster.

Jesse missed him like oxygen. Gabriel huffed a dark laugh.

“Yeah, well. That makes two of us.”

Jesse didn’t know what Gabriel meant; that he was mad at Jesse. That he was mad at himself. Both, maybe. It didn’t matter.

“Come here,” Jesse said, and Gabriel breathed out like he’d been holding it for years, and crawled into bed beside him. Slowly. Carefully.

Jesse hurt no matter how he laid, so he curled into Gabriel and rested his head on his chest.

“How long was I out?” Jesse asked, and Gabriel tapped at the screen of his phone on the table and frowned for a moment.

“Fifteen hours or so. Biotics kept you under a while.”

Jesse smiled, and did his best not to laugh, because he knew how much it would sting.

“Merry fuckin’ Christmas,” he said. Gabriel’s fingers were hot as they threaded through his hair.

“Merry Christmas, Jesse.”

The lights on the tree flickered on and off. Gabriel’s nanites vibrated in his blood, filled his mouth with the taste of rust. He was alive.

His chest still ached. It was nothing biotics would fix.

Jesse just needed time. Gabriel would give it to him.

Jesse would take it.

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Tell me nice things, here or on [twitter.](https://twitter.com/scifictioness?lang=en)


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